People are just no damn good. This, from the great Danish
writer-filmmaker Lars von Trier, whose "Breaking the Waves"
not only introduced Emily Watson to the moviegoing public but
succeeded wonderfully in projecting the story of a young,
simple-minded Scottish woman who willingly takes lovers,
believing that this would cure her husband who has been
paralyzed by an accident. Von Trier proves that people are no
damn good by paradoxically introducing us to a town made up
of good people, the sorts who might be found in Thornton
Wilder's Pulitzer-prize-winning American play, "Our Town,"
which is about folks in a New Hampshire village given graphic
evidence that every day should be cherished. Wilder's
temperament is an optimistic one, however, while Von Trier,
takes most of the three-hour running time of his latest film
"Dogville," to justify his cynicism.

The people in a small, poor, closed-off Rocky Mountain
community during the Depression more or less get along with
one another, perhaps because everyone is equally poor and
without particular influence. They take a large risk at first,
sheltering a woman who has escaped from a band of gangsters,
in much the way the righteous people in the Nazi-occupied
nations of Europe harbored Jews (like Anne Frank) who needed
their protection. Von Trier insists that circumstances have a
way of changing, the good turning to bad in much the way that a
fine wedge of Camembert cheese becomes inedible from being
exposed too long to warm air.

Just what is there about us and our fellows on the planet that
corrodes our good will? Power. Every schoolchild used to
know Lord Acton's classic insight, "Power corrupts: And
absolute power corrupts absolutely." Just watch any 10-year-
old, helpless and dependent and regularly punished by the
wielders of authority, when face to face with a flock of pigeons in
the park. He chases them, and god help any bird that might fall
into his vengeful hands.

While thematically there's nothing new under the sun, and
given the vast quantities of movies that embrace the concept of
the evils of power, what makes "Dogville" stand apart, giving
Von Trier's work a puissance virtually unique in the past decade
or so? This is not difficult. Von Trier is willing to take risks, to
experiment, even if his dabbling into the depth of originality
could cost him the typical audience eager to repeat their theater
experiences ad infinitum rather than see films afresh. To this
end, he unfolds his drama from the very first moment on a stage
bare of buildings, scenery, and all the appurtenances that give
movies their cinematic life. In place of the shacks inhabited by
these poor people, we see some boards, the boundaries
marked off on the stage with chalk lines. Even Moses the dog is
unseen until the very conclusion save for a printed word "dog"
and a sketchy design of his lowly abode.

When people knock on doors, they appear to be hammering
on air. When a woman hides herself from gangsters in the
town, she is covered simply by a series of wooden poles. While
the town meeting hall is obviously an enclosed space, we see
the shabby auditorium in the open air. In other words, Von Trier
is challenging the very notion that movies must be naturalistic
(i.e. with scenery designed to look like real, physical structures)
and that abstracted designs must be relegated strictly to the
legitimate theater. If "Dogville" were presented according to
conventions, its location would be perhaps a theater off-
Broadway, such as the Minetta Lane in New York or the second-
story platform at Dublin's Abbey Theatre.

What's remarkable is that this filmed play actually works: Does
it ever. After a while, the audience forgets that it's missing
concrete buildings, gooseberry trees, and closed-off houses and
concentrates as Von Trier has hoped on the characters, on
people whose temperaments change before our eyes, their
metamorphoses coming across most credibly. The change has
been earned.

The story opens on a village that could have been imagined
by Thornton Wilder, a small town where everyone knows
everyone else, where despite a few grievances of some against
others, everyone gets along. These are honorable people, but
honorable, ultimately, in the ironic sense conveyed by Marc
Antony in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar." Tom Edison Jr. (Paul
Bettany), the town spokesman, regularly delivers moralistic
sermons on Sunday notwithstanding the irritation some in the
congregation feel about his alleged condescension, and life
goes on month after month with consistency. But now, a
stranger, Grace (Nicole Kidman), turns up suddenly, on the run
from gangsters. After a unanimous vote by the town, her new
neighbors agree to hide her notwithstanding a reward for her
return dangled by The Big Man (James Caan) from the back of
his Cadillac. At first content to allow asylum without conditions,
the Dogville residents gradually opt to exploit her labors,
keeping her busy with hard physical work while they treat her
with increasing contempt. Near the story's end, only Tom who
has grown to love her and whose feelings are reciprocated by
Grace stands by her as she becomes increasingly and literally
enslaved (and worse) by the others. Tom holds out for a while.
Later: Payback time.

Von Trier has assembled an all-star cast for his vigorous,
alarming fable, whose Depression-era setting is but a thin
disguise for the story's universality. Ms. Kidman and Mr.
Bettany have terrific support from such stars as Ben Gazzara as
a man who refuses to admit that he's physically blind; James
Caan, as the boss with absolute power; Patricia Clarkson as the
mother of four kids, one of which is a prototype for that kid
whose neck you'd love to wring; Jeremy Davies as the slow-
witted loser; Lauren Bacall, Chloe Sevigny and Blair Brown as
women who should, by nature, have stood by the outsider of
their gender; Stellan Skarsgard as the town grouch; Philip Baker
Hall as the retired doctor on a small pension; Zeljko Ivanek as
Ben, whose agreement to lead the frightened woman to
freedom is tenuous. John Hurt fills in the gaps with his eloquent
narration, delivering words that soar like poetry with alliteration,
metaphors, similes and best of all, a delicious irony.

While most moviegoers will compare the film to "Our Town," a
better example my favorite drama of all-time is Friedrich
Durrenmatt's "The Visit," or in the German Swiss of the author,
"Der Besuch der alten dame." While the film version which
starred Ingred Bergman trashes the very point of the play,
Maurice Valency's adaptation projects a wealthy woman who
returns to her debt-ridden home town to offer a sum greater
than they have ever imagined to help her. She wants the life of
a villager who years back had caused her to be expelled from
town in disgrace. Ringing denial of this absurd demand is
followed by the graduate corruption of everyone in town, the
village schoolteacher the last to go under. Will the poor guy's
neighbors, who have sworn never to turn their esteemed
resident over to the evil woman, abide by their pledge when big
bucks are offered? Like Von Trier in "Dogville," Durrenmatt
shows us step by step, slow and easy, how people change
when an offer of power (in Durrenmatt's case, money) is on the
table.

"Dogville" earns its three-hours' running time. Anything
shorter would fail to convince us that those we consider nice
people are, at core, rotten. There is not a single saintly person
in this story, and that's all to Von Trier's credit.

Two major points have led to a division among critics who
have seen "Dogville," perhaps at the Cannes Film Festival. One
is that the stripping down of the naturalism so basic to motion
pictures is pretentious that "Dogville" is meant to be seen on
the legitimate stage. That's their view. However, Von Trier
indicates that perhaps the most abstract play can justifiably be
filmed. (The converse is probably not true. The stage cannot
simulate the conventions of the film industry, though Broadway
has long tried hard to give a TV- and movie-addicted audience
the most obvious kitchen-sink naturalism in scenic design and
motion.)

The other point is that the United States is indirectly trashed,
and not in the humorously mild way that we've seen in the
animated "Triplet of Bellville," where the worst sin of America is
its love for burgers and fries. Von Trier does not attempt to
raise a defense to this charge. In the production notes, he
states, "If you are strong, you also have to be just and good, and
that's not something you see in America at all. I don't think that
Americans are more evil than others but then again, I don't see
them as less evil than the bandit states Mr Bush has been
talking so much about. I think that people are more or less than
same everywhere. What can I say about America? Power
corrupts."

No other film in past few years can stand up Von Trier's
success in putting across a vision in such a powerful,
entertaining way. Not "The Lord of the Rings" (the highly over-
praised victory of soulless technology over meaningful story-
telling), not even my favorite from 2003, "American Splendor"
(as creative as anything else turned out that year, but without
the political, philosophical and moral strength of "Dogville"). To
my mind, given the film's universal vision, solid performances,
lyrical narration and appropriately baroque musical background,
"Dogville" has earned the title of masterwork.